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BY ARTHUR TRAIN 


NOVELS 


THE NEEDLE’S EYE 

HIS CHILDREN’S CHILDREN 

THE GOLDFISH 

THE EARTHQUAKE 

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 

THE WORLD AND THOMAS KELLY 

THE HERMIT OF TURKEY HOLLOW 

THE ADVENTURES OF ARTEMAS QUIBBLE 
“C. Q.”—IN THE WIRELESS HOUSE 

THE BUTLER’S STORY 


IN PREPARATION 


MORALS A LA MODE 
THE BLIND GODDESS 


STORIES 
THE LOST GOSPEL 
TUT, TOT! MR. TUTT 
BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL 
TUTT AND MR. TUTT 
TRUE STORIES OF CRIME 
McALLISTER AND HIS DOUBLE 
MORTMAIN 


ESSAYS 


ON THE TRAIL OF THE BAD MEN 
THE PRISONER AT THE BAR 
COURTS, CRIMINALS, AND THE CAMORRA 


The Lost Gospel 





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7 olor my 
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| “Ihe Lost Gospel 


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ARTHUR TRAIN 










With a frontispiece by 
James DouGcHERTY 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


1925 


Coryricnt, 1925, sy 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO, 


Printed in the United States of America 





To 


MAXWELL PERKINS 





PREFACE 


THE numerous requests for copies of “‘The Lost 
Gospel”’ justify its republication in a more per- 
manent form than the pages of a magazine long 
since out of print and hence unobtainable. The 
many letters of inquiry from clergymen and others 
regarding the various occurrences in the story and 
the supposed historical data referred to by the sev- 
eral characters indicate a disposition on the part 
of certain readers to accept the narrative as more 
or less founded on fact. The author therefore 
takes this opportunity to state most emphatically 
that the story of ‘‘The Lost Gospel” is entirely 
imaginary, including most of the references to 
events, names, or places. The letters, which have 
come from all over the globe, reflect the universal 
craving for some light, even if reflected from the 
pages of ephemeral fiction, upon the problem pre- 
sented by the attempt to apply the doctrines 
enunciated by Christ to the complex civilization 
of the modern world. 

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CONTENTS 


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THE LOST GOSPEL 
For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. 


“THE trouble with Christianity,” said Ismail 
Bey, “‘is that it is utterly unpractical.”’ 

“The trouble with Christianity,” said Count 
Poldolski, ‘‘is that we do not really know what 
Christ taught.” 

“The trouble with Christianity,” said Rhoda 
Calthrop, “is that it has never been tried.” 

The party, following the wake of fashion, had 
come up from Cairo on the Calthrops’ dahabeah to 
see the recent excavations in the Valley of the 
Kings, and the Cheetah, on whose awning-covered 
deck they were sitting, was moored with a 
hundred other pleasure-craft on the east bank of 
the Nile a mile above Thebes. Ismail Bey waved 
a sleek white hand across the turbid river toward 
the red-brown fields that stretched to the Libyan 
Hills. Under the cobalt arc the whole Egyptian 
world of palm-rimmed bank, of broken column 

I 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


and ruined temple, as well as the turgid current 
of the Nile itself, was a welter of dazzling gold, 
flushed with scarlet and streaked with purple. 

“On these sands can be traced the history of 
all the ancient civilizations—of Assyria and Baby- 
lon, of Macedon, Greece, and Rome—and of all 
the old religions. ‘‘Nothing remains of any of 
them.”’ 

“T thought you were a good Mohammedan, 
Excellency,’”’ commented his hostess. 

“T am,” answered Ismail Bey quite calmly. “I 
obey the sheris, I pay the charitable tax, I say 
my prayers five times a day, I fast during Rama- 
dan, and I have even made the pilgrimage to 
Mecca. What more is necessary?” 

“Faith!” replied Miss Calthrop. 

The Egyptian laughed. 

“T am a graduate of Balliol,” he said. ‘All 
sensible men believe the same thing. What it is 
no sensible man ever tells.” 

“But Christianity remains!” protested the 
beautiful Princess Zeeka. 

“What you call Christianity !”’ retorted Poldol- 
ski. ‘But does anybody know what Christ really 

2 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


preached? The Gospels are not contemporaneous. 
They were written many years after the events 
chronicled therein occurred.” 

“Christ gave us a spiritual ideal,” answered Miss 
Calthrop gravely, “‘to which we hope the world 
may some day attain.” 

The breeze from the south was stirring the rip- 
ples among the sand bars to lavender. Hoopoes 
and wild pigeons flew down-stream—imps fleeing 
the gates of Paradise, marking the channel to 
silent boats with wide-spread lateen sails on their 
way from Aswan to Cairo and Alexandria, black 
lacquer on a yellow screen. The escarpments 
to the west sprayed the sky with gold. 

“How mysterious the Nile is!” the princess 
murmured. ‘“‘No wonder it is worshipped as a 
god!” 

The Egyptian’s eyes narrowed. 

“The Nile,” he replied, ‘‘like religion, is born 
amid the fierce passions of savagery, in the mid- 
day darkness of primeval growths, in the ruthless- 
ness of credulity and fanaticism and the strange 
worship of beasts in the likeness of men—” He 
half-closed his lids and let the smoke curl slowly 


3 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


from his nostrils as he watched the rose-tinted oval 
face of the princess. ‘And, like all religions, it 
eventually disappears.” 

“But Christianity does not!”? The eyes of the 
princess were smouldering. 

Ismail Bey shrugged. 

“Tf Poldolski is right, your true Christianity 
may have disappeared already. I do not wish to 
give offense, my friends; but did not Christ teach 
self-sacrifice, non-resistance, and forgiveness of 
wrongs? Did he make any distinction between 
individuals and nations in his teachings? Well— 
I am, it is true, a Mohammedan—a barbarian, if 
you will—but to me there is something curiously 
inconsistent in the application of these doctrines 
among what you would call the more civilized 
nations. It is not enough to say that Christ did 
not mean literally what he said. Does anybody 
claim that the Prophet Moses or the Prophet 
Mohammed did not mean exactly what he said? 
Listen !” 

From the circle of sailors seated cross-legged in 
the bow of the dahabeah came the monotonous 
thump of a daraboukeh. “Al-lah!” they chanted 


4 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


fiercely. “Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!” The cry rose 
harsh and nasal in the silence of the sunset. 

“Those down there do not doubt that when they 
die they will go instantly to Paradise,” said the 
Egyptian. 

“That is my point, Excellency,” agreed the Pole. 
“The words of the Koran came from the lips of 
Mohammed. Christ did not write the Gospels. 
His meaning has always been the subject of con- 
troversy. It is conceivable that the discovery of 
a new Septuagint might change our entire view- 
point.” 

“Like that found by Tischendorf in Saint 
Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai,” sug- 
gested Professor Troy of the Azar. ‘‘Such manu- 
scripts occasionally turn up. There must be hun- 
dreds of them hidden away in ancient libraries or 
among unexcavated ruins. Our three chief sources 
of knowledge concerning Christ’s teachings are 
the Alexandrian manuscript in the British Mu- 
seum—Codex A, as we call it; the Vatican manu- 
script at Rome, Codex B; and the Sinaitic, Codex 
Aleph, at St. Petersburg; and they all range from 
about 300 to 450 A. D. But the prior existence of 


5 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


certain others is well established—the Lost Gospel 
referred to by Saint Hermanticus, for example.” 

“Oh, I say! Have you heard of that too?” 
Major Bagley, of the Camel Corps, put down his 
glass. “I always thought it was just another 
Arab yarn, like the vanished oasis of Kurafra.” 

“Tt’s more than a yarn,” replied Professor Troy. 
“There are many references to it in the writings 
of the Fathers. The Fifth Gospel is alleged to 
have been written in Latin by a member of the 
household of Pontius Pilate. It is a tradition, you 
remember, that Procula, Pilate’s wife, secretly 
visited the Saviour in prison before his crucifixion 
and became a convert. The story is somehow 
mixed up with that.” 

“What is supposed to have become of this Lost 
Gospel?” asked Miss Calthrop with interest. 

“Tt is said to have been brought to Egypt, 
where it disappeared. What have vou heard about 
it, Bagley?” 

“T’ve heard such a story, or its first cousin, told 
around many a caravan fire in strange places,” 
answered the officer. “Curiously enough, it is 
usually associated with the legend of Kurafra— 

6 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the City Devoured by the Sand, as the Bedouins 
call it. The desert is full of such tales.” 

“Tt always gives me a funny feeling to hear the 
Arabs refer so casually to historical characters— 
almost as if they were still alive,’ remarked the 
hostess as she handed Ismail Bey his tea. ‘‘But 
in Egypt the past and the present are one.” 

From behind the high bank against which the 
Cheetah was moored came the syncopated war- 
bling of a flute, closer at hand the creaking of the 
shadoofs used in the days of Amenhotep. A pro- 
cession of fellahin carrying tools and baskets, of 
boys on donkeys, of female figures bearing jars 
upon their shoulders, moved along the edge of 
the bluff—children of the Pharaohs sprung to life 
from the temple walls. 

The hostess’s brother, Hugh Calthrop, who had 
been sitting by himself in the Cheetah’s stern, 
arose and came forward with a paper in his hand. 
He was an emotional young fellow, given to doing 
things on the spur of the moment. 

“Look here,’ he said, pulling his short mustache 
nervously, ‘‘this is certainly very queer.” He 
poured himself out a drink, 


7 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“Did any of you ever know Paul Trent?” 

“‘T seem to have heard the name.” Professor 
Troy rubbed his chin as if to stir the magic lamp 
of recollection. 

“Of course,” answered Miss Calthrop. “He 
used to come to our house in Chicago almost every 
Sunday afternoon. But wasn’t he killed in the 
war?” 

Calthrop held up the paper. 

“T have just had a letter from him!” 

“From Paul?’ exclaimed his sister incredu- 
lously. “But he has been dead ten years!” 

“Exactly. This letter which you saw handed 
to me not ten minutes ago by Yussuf was written 
to his mother in January, 1914. It’s been wander- 
ing around ever since.” 

“How is that possible?” asked the Princess 
Zeeka. 

Ismail Bey glanced at her quizzically. 

“When you know Egypt better, dearest lady, 
that will not surprise you.” 

“IT do not care to know Egypt any better,” she 
answered coldly. ‘Please tell us about. the let- 
ter. 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Calthrop pulled a chair into the group and sat 
down. 

“Tt’s certainly weird—a voice from the dead 
and that sort of thing. Trent was a young Egyp- 
tologist of Chicago University, out here on his 
sabbatical. He wanted to do a little original work, 
and I let him have some money. The last I heard 
he was in Jerusalem. Then came the war. I as- 
sumed, naturally, he’d managed to enlist, and 
thought no more about it. Anyhow, it would have 
been no time to hunt for missing archeologists. 
But when the show ended Trent didn’t turn up. 
Meantime his old mother—who always refused to 
believe that he would not come back—died her- 
self. I was her executor. The State Department 
made some sort of an investigation and traced him 
as far as Bukara in company with a German named 
Harnach-Hulsen. They simply vanished into the 
desert.” 

“But the letter!” cried the princess. ‘‘From 
where did your friend mail it?” 

“It was written in the desert and given to a pass- 
ing caravan bound for Siwa. Heaven knows what 
happened to it. Perhaps the Arab put it in his 


g 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


pocket—if Arabs have pockets—and just forgot 
it. Or it may have been tucked into a pigeonhole 
in Bukara or: Siwa, or left lying around until it 
was picked up by somebody who decided that the 
easiest thing to do was to stick it in the mail—as 
perhaps it was.” 

“But how does it come to your” asked Pro- 
fessor Troy. 

“Because, having been delivered through the 
mail to Mrs. Trent’s address in Chicago, it has 
been forwarded to me here as her executor.” 

“ After all,’’ commented Ismail Bey, “‘ten years 
is not so long for a letter to go ten thousand miles. 
That is a thousand miles a year. Out here we 
should call that fast.” 

“TI will read you the letter,” said Calthrop. 


*“““WESTERN DESERT, BUKARA. 
“** January 6, 1914. 

*** Dearest Mother: You will already have got 
the letter I mailed you from Cairo on Christmas 
Day, and learned how at the monastery of the 
Benedictine Monks of Beuren in Jerusalem I had 
the luck to stumble upon Max Harnach-Hulsen, 

ike) 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the famous German Egyptologist, who became 
tremendously interested in my theory that Roman 
and possibly Persian remains would very likely 
be found in the Libyan Desert north of the Oasis 
of Beharieh in the direction of the Fayum. My 
funds were getting rather low and to my great 
delight he agreed to join forces with me. Other- 
wise I couldn’t have gone. It appears that the 
Emperor William II personally is putting up for 
him and so of course he had first to wire Berlin. 
Meantime we went on by rail to Cairo for the holi- 
days, and there I found your dear little present. 
I shall always wear it, mother dear. Thank you a 
thousand times. 

“Well, a few days later H-H got a reply from 
the Kaiser, offering to supply all the necessary 
funds on the condition that the finds should go to 
the University of Berlin or, as he put it, “to my 
people.” That seems fair enough. And I may say 
there has been no lack of money. Well, we made 
our arrangements and got off by rail before New 
Year’s to Medinet-el-Fayum and from there to 
Beharieh, making the balance of the journey to 
Bukara by motor and camel. Here it really looked 

II 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


as if we might be badly hung up on account of the 
difficulty of finding any camels not infected with 
hump disease. However, H-H, who is an authori- 
tative person, an officer in the Landwehr, went 
to the gendarmerie and saw the omdeh and made 
a big noise about the Kaiser, and the first thing 
I knew we had all the camels we wanted—beauti- 
ful slender hajins such as one never sees except in 
the desert. So this is really good-by. 

***T like H-H immensely in spite of his gruff man- 
ner, which really doesn’t mean anything. He is a 
big, reddish man about six feet two, with cropped 
hair, a thick neck, and very large hands and feet, 
a man of iron—physically and intellectually a re- 
incarnation of what I imagine Bismarck to have 
been. He is very chummy with the Kaiser and 
belongs to a sort of dining-club of which General 
von Bernhardi, Admiral von Tirpitz, and the 
Prince-Bishop of Breslau also are members. He 
has shown me several very intimate letters from 
William II, whom he admires extravagantly. In 
fact, he classes him with Hammurabi, Moses, 
Abraham, Mohammed, Charlemagne, Shakspere, 
and Lincoln. 

12 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


*¢Well, he may be everything H-H says, but, 
as I don’t know the gentleman, I’m no judge. 
Anyhow, he must be a clever chap. H-H is ob- 
sessed with the idea that there is danger of the 
Germans, who used to be the best fighting men 
and most warlike nation in Europe, becoming 
what he calls a too peace-loving nation. He says 
that what they need is a shock to reawaken their 
warlike instincts. I can hardly keep my face 
straight when he is getting off this bunk. In some 
ways I feel that H-H isn’t much more sympathetic 
to me than one of our Arab camel-drivers. But 
he is a regular he-man for all that, and we are 
great pals. So, good-by again, mother. 

Your loving son, PAUL” 
Calthrop turned the letter over dramatically. 
“Now listen to what is written in pencil on the 


back: 
SS Jane 23. 


“** Dearest Mother: We have made the greatest 
find in history. I cannot say more now, but we 
shall both be famous. I am forbidden to reveal 
its nature, but you will soon learn. We are about 


I3 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


two hundred kilometres from Bukara. I have 
promised Harnach-Hulsen not to say where until 
we make a formal announcement. I have just 
time to scratch this off and give it to a passing 
Bedouin who is on his way to Siwa. God bless you, 
mother. Hurrah! Hurrah! Prony 

A gray dusk distilled itself along the canals; the 
surface of the Nile was a steel mirror clouded here 
and there by the breath of the night wind. A 
felucca came down midstream, a ripple spreading 
wide from her bows, her oars swinging to a muffled 
chantey that might have been the barbaric ritual 
of some equatorial deity. 

“Bismillah !”? muttered the Egyptian. “I won- 
der what they found.” 

“God only knows!” answered Calthrop. ‘But 
I am going to find out.” 

“‘Hugh,” cried his sister, ‘“you don’t mean you 
are going to——” 

‘““Yes—to-morrow. I’m starting for Beharieh, 
not in the hope of finding Trent, because of course 
he’s been dead ten years—but of finding what he 
found.” 


14 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


There was no sound but the clutch and whisper 
of the current along the dahabeah’s sides. 

Bagley tossed his cigarette overboard definitely. 

“You'd be crazy to try anything of the kind! 
There’s not a drop of water between Bukara and 
Siwa, and none in the direction of the Fayum. 
Rohlfs nearly died there in ’72. Our fliers have 
scoured the desert in every direction around there 
for five hundred kilometres. Besides,’”’ he added, 
“T doubt if the Frontier-Districts Administrator 
would give you a permit.” 

“All the same, I’m going!” declared Calthrop. 
“But I won’t risk anybody’s life but my own. I 
shall go to Bukara, look up some of the Arabs who 
went with Trent, and start out from there. You 
couldn’t expect me to do anything else!” he ex- 
claimed. 

The princess looked at him meaningly. ‘‘No,” 
she said; “‘no one could expect you to do anything 
else.” 

Calthrop thrust the letter in his pocket and 
stood up. 

“T’m going down to collect my duffel,” he re- 
marked. ‘‘The Cairo train leaves at nine.” 


T5 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


He walked alone to the stern again. The Nile 
was jet. Night had fallen. To his excited imagina- 
tion it seemed alive with mysterious noises—faint 
cries and distant shoutings, the neighing of horses, 
the tramp of legionaries, the crash of arms, the 
rumble of chariot-wheels; while from the bow came 
the never-ceasing throb of the daraboukeh and 
at intervals the lonely cry of “Allahu akbar! 
Allahu akbar! La ilaha illa-llah!” 


II 


“In the name of God, the compassionate, the 
merciful: On the blessed day of Friday, 28th 
Rabia eth Thani, 1332, there came to our town 
Bukara the honored Max Harnach-Hulsen, the 
German, professor of the honored Zawia of Berlin, 
and also the honored Paul Trent, the American, 
professor of the honored Zawia of Chicago in the 
Etats-Unis, and they are carrying the orders of 
the great and honored General Sir Martin Crafts; 
and according to the exalted orders we met them 
with great honor and hospitality and congratu- 
lated them on their safe arrival to us. We hoped 
that God may be exalted, would grant success to 

16 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


their efforts, and return them safe and victorious 
in the best condition for the sake of the Prophet. 
“ (Signed) 
“The Second Adviser of Bukara, AMED EL 
Sussu, May God forgive him. 
“The Judge, OSWAN EL Barassi, May God for- 
give him. 
“The Adviser, SAYED MoHAmMMED IBU OMAR 
EL FADHILL, May God forgive him. 
“The Wakil of the Sayed at Bukara, MOHAMMED 
SALEH EL BAsKArI, May God forgive him.” 


Thus had read the only official record of the 
visit of the two archeologists to the town of 
Bukara; the only record, since, although Cal- 
throp had stayed there a week, he had found no 
other clew to them. Yet, unless all the Arabs who 
had accompanied Trent and Harnach-Hulsen had 
died of thirst, one or more of them should be still 
living in the oasis. He was in the absurd position 
of having a caravan on his hands and with no idea 
of where he wanted to go. Inquiries of the omdeh 
elicited only the customary shrugs and the positive 
assurance that there were no archeological re- 


17 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


mains in that part of the country, for in spite of 
the difficulty of travel every inch of the Western 
Desert under the control of the Frontier-Districts 
Administration—which was responsible for the 
safety of all country not watered by the Nile be- 
tween the Sudan and the Mediterranean—had 
been covered time and again by the Camel Corps 
Patrol. Those who had followed the regular cara- 
van routes to Siwa, to Taizerbo, to Kebabo, on 
the way to the Tebu or Lake Chad, or to Dachel 
on the south, had never heard even so much as a 
whisper of any such place as Kurafra. 

And then the omdeh ventured to give Calthrop 
a piece of advice. Why not, he suggested, instead 
of starting off blindfold into the desert without 
any definite objective, enlarge his caravan and 
make the trip to Siwa, the ancient site of the Tem- 
ple of Jupiter Ammon, where he could visit and 
photograph the rock tombs of the Karit-el-Musab- 
berin, the temple of Aghormi, and the ruins at 
Ummebeida? 

Calthrop thanked him and let it go at that. 
Eventually he caused it to be known throughout 
the bazaar that he would pay one hundred pounds 

18 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


gold to any one who would guide his caravan to 
where he could find any trace of the missing men. 
Then and then only did Mohammed Ali Ibrahim 
ben Rahim make his appearance, a desiccated 
Berber with a skin like a lizard’s and eyes as 
sharp and glinting. 

“Not of my own knowledge,” he protested, 
“but by that of my sister’s son, Mohammed 
Yussuf el Bulaki, the peace of God be on him. For 
he is no longer living, being taken in his sixty- 
first year, while I, full of years, am still alive at 
eighty-two. Neither did I hear it from his own 
lips, but by hearsay from my sister Fatima, after 
her son, my nephew, was dead; for I was then 
dwelling at Siwa, where my grandsons were in 
attendance at the Zawia, and I heard it from her 
after she was a widow and had come to dwell with 
me. Nevertheless, by the accuracy of her repeti- 
tion am I able to guide the gentleman’s caravan 
to the spot described by my nephew, for he noted 
the course by Jerdi, as we call the North Star, in 
its relation to certain other minor stars and by 
other methods which it is not necessary to go 
into.” 

19 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


And now it was sunset of the fifth day out from 
Bukara. 

“Adaryayan !”’ shouted Ibrahim. “We have ar- 
rived, O sick ones!” 

The caravan halted in the hatia in the lee of 
the dunes and two of the baggage camels dropped 
to their knees. Calthrop, mounted on a fast hajin, 
had ridden on ahead and was already on the top 
of the next gherd. As far as his vision carried, 
one snow-white dune lifted beyond another. All 
day long they had climbed ridge after ridge under 
a sun that scorched through helmet and kufiya 
alike, until now the dispirited camels trailed their 
heads and gave off that acrid odor which is the 
inevitable concomitant of thirst. They had had 
nothing to eat since the third day, when the 
prickly, juiceless bush of the mehemsa, sometimes 
found under the ridges, had entirely disappeared. 
Now the poor beasts struggled along, limping and 
wavering, and when they stopped tried to eat the 
stuffing of the baggage saddles. 

“Haya alla Salat !”’ came the call to prayer from 
below. “Haya alla Salat!” 

Already the Arabs were at their devotions— 

20 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


making kibla, as it is called—washing their hands 
in the sand, prostrating themselves, and praying 
with a quick glance over each shoulder and a mut- 
tered ejaculation to drive away the evil spirits 
supposed to be lurking behind them. To Cal- 
throp, sitting alone upon his hajin and looking 
down upon them from the top of the gherd, it no 
longer seemed fantastic that these children of the 
desert should people it with jinn and houris, see 
the finger-prints of Allah upon the drifting sands, 
and hear the voices of his angels in the lisp of the 
night wind along the wadis. 

The setting sun burning upon Calthrop’s back 
told him that he, like the rest of them, was facing 
the sacred Kaaba a thousand miles away, toward 
which amidst this desolate waste of sand they 
turned as unerringly as the compass needle swings 
to the magnetic pole. He had always thought of 
the desert as a dead thing, like the surface of the 
moon; odorless, silent, for the most part motion- 
less; a place of intolerable solitude. To his sur- 
prise he had found it quite otherwise, even amid 
the fantastic desolation of the apparently lifeless 
dunes. 

2i 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


It had not amazed him to find the flat, stony 
plain about Bukara spotted with gray gorse, a 
grazing ground for sheep and camels, to see long 
lines of hamlas come stalking over the horizon’s 
rim laden with ivory and feathers from Wadai 
and Lake Chad, to find the news of the Near East 
discussed with passionate earnestness by fadhling 
caravans; in a word, to find the Western Desert 
teeming with activity. But what astounded him 
was that here, far from the routes of the Jalo, 
Anjela, Siwa, Jaghabub, and Darfur caravans, 
amid the weird, curly hummocks that stretch like 
an ice floe between Bukara and the Fayum, fre- 
quented only by the scattered descendants of the 
fierce bandits who lurked there in the days of the 
Romans, where all vegetable growth is extinct and 
not even a desiccated bush breaks the blinding 
smoothness of the surface, where no jackal or cony 
can survive, and where water does not exist—that 
here he should feel no loneliness, but on the con- 
trary a curious sense of familiarity with it all, as 
if he had been born, lived, and perhaps died there. 
He was filled with an exalted sense of the power 
and mystery of God, the unity of all things physi- 

22 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


cal and spiritual, of being guided and directed, of 
his own essential participation in the affairs of an 
unseen world. 

The wind bore across the ridges a faint odor 
of myrrh, a curious scent of the desert, of the 
untarnished earth itself; it lifted the white sand 
from the crests of the gherds and sent it trick- 
ling, sifting, and whispering in tiny avalanches 
down into the hatias, seeming to drive the snowy 
dunes before it like the billows of a mighty sea 
that swept on and on, irresistible, relentless, in- 
evitable, like the tide submerging whatever came 
in its way. Indeed, Professor Troy had said that 
the gherds did move, and for that reason were 
known as “‘travelling’’ dunes; that once the whole 
Libyan Desert was a well-watered and fertile 
country supporting a considerable degree of civ- 
ilization, but that gradually the desert sea that 
washed the southern edges of its oases had en- 
croached upon and smothered the inhabitants, 
filling their cisterns, absorbing their lakes, blotting 
out their villages and towns, rising higher and 
higher until it submerged even their temples and 
their hills, driving the population toward the sea- 


23 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


board on the one hand and the Nile upon the 
other. 

From the hatia rose the pungent scent of dung- 
fed fires and the grumbling roar of the camels. 
The black goats’-hair tents had been pitched and 
the water girbas and bales of supplies arranged in 
a zareba, or hollow square. Supper would be ready 
in a few minutes. Calthrop was ready for it, in 
spite of his swollen tongue, his burning throat, his 
inflamed eyes, and his cracked lips and gums. He 
had expected and discounted all that. What he 
had not fully previsioned was the vast waste of 
sand through which now for nearly a week the 
camels had patiently struggled up and down, slip- 
ping and sliding, sinking at times almost to their 
knees. There were no tracks of any sort. What- 
ever wandering Bedouin might pass that way left 
no trace behind him—spurlos versenkt. The sun, 
the wind, and Jerdi, the North Star, are the only 
guides in this part of the Western Desert. Yet 
the guide, Mohammed Ali Ibrahim ben Rahim, 
had never faltered. But another day and they 
must find water. The camels could last but three 
or four more at most. 


24, 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


He swept with his glasses the sea of foaming 
breakers that came rushing toward him, one be- 
hind the other, higher and higher. A wisp of sand 
curled lightly along the top of the gherd like a 
whiplash. The hajin raised its head, which it had 
lowered almost to its knees, and wriggled its cush- 
ioned lips. It, like its rider, felt a call to some- 
thing. Then the light dimmed, and at the same 
instant his eye caught a gara, or tabular hill, 
strangely rectangular in this tipsy, curving world. 
It might, of course, be a trick of shadow, but 
he knew that a straight shadow can be cast 
only by a straight line. He looked again. Behind 
the gara, clearly defined against the side of one 
of the gherds, was a pyramidal gray patch. He 
glanced back over his shoulder. The sun was sink- 
ing in a whorl of flamingo feathers. The cohorts 
of the gherds gleamed with purple and gold. Cal- 
throp tightened his rein and plunged down the 
other side of the dune, urging his hajin to top 
speed. 

There is no twilight in the desert. The sun dies 
in a single iridescent moment. Yet when, ten min- 
utes later, Calthrop pulled in his sweating hajin, 


25 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


there was still light enough for him to determine 
that what towered above him against the pale 
saffron of the afterglow was beyond peradventure 
the peak of a pyramid. In three tiers it rose to a 
point fifty feet above the floor of the hatia, termi- 
nating in a single massive block. On three sides _ 
the engulfing sand rose nearly to the top, then fell 
away sharply on the fourth, revealing cracks and 
apertures almost large enough to permit the pas- 
sage of a human being. 

Breathless, he peered through the dusk ae 
the hatia. Surely it had a curious and significant 
regularity of form—this sandy ravine in the lee of 
the gherd—like a giant avenue. He hobbled the 
hajin and walked along the hatia for a hundred 
yards until, climbing imperceptibly, he found him- 
self standing upon the top of the gara. His hob- 
nails grated harshly; he kicked and struck stone; 
he was standing upon the pylon of a submerged 
temple. Kurafra! | 

He stood there stirred to his heart’s core at the 
visions conjured by his imagination. Here be- 
neath his feet Amenhotep or Rameses the Great, 
or possibly even Nimrod, the Assyrian conqueror, 

20 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


had marked the western boundary of his kingdom. 
Here under the lash had strained thousands of 
slaves, glistening black giants from Ethiopia, from 
Numidia, and from the distant oases of the west. 
Here some proud monarch, now a mummy, had 
raised his shrine to the great Ammon, and, reclin- 
ing with his queen like an Egyptian Canute upon 
the rim of the desert sea, had looked out across the 
sandy waves and bidden them to advance no far- 
ther. How they had mocked him! 

The line of light on the western horizon had 
vanished. Like lamps turned on by an unseen 
hand the firmament unexpectedly blazed with 
stars. Above, the night was girdled with a sash 
of silver dust. 

Calthrop realized that he could not possibly find 
his way back to the camp in the dark, but the 
Arabs would know that he must be near by and 
he could rejoin them at daylight. With blanket, 
haversack, canteen, and shamadan, or wind can- 
dle, he could be perfectly comfortable. Flashlight 
in hand, he began looking for a likely spot to sleep. 
Throwing the circle of light along the surface of 
the pyramid, he examined the crevices until he 


27 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


found one large enough to creep into, and then 
worked his body through the aperture and crawled 
along, turning the ray of light ahead toward the 
interior. Reddish brown, the rough sandstone 
leaped toward him, then the gleam lost itself in 
darkness to reflect a darker surface some thirty 
feet distant. 

Getting to his feet again, Calthrop fished his 
baggage through the crack behind him, and clasp- 
ing it in his arms crept along the sandy floor into 
the chamber, or hollow, under the dome. Clearly 
he was not the first to have been there, for in 
one corner lay the charred remains of a fire, and 
not far off the skeleton of a sheep. There was also 
about half an alof, or bundle of fodder, and this 
he took outside and tossed to the hajin. Then 
he lit the shamadan, spread out his blanket, and 
prepared to make himself at home. 

By the time he had eaten the contents of his 
haversack, drunk the hot coffee from his vacuum 
bottle, and lit a cigarette he was in a mood of ex- 
ultation. It was reasonably certain that he was 
sitting in one of the pyramids that fringed the 
once-fertile strip watered in ancient times by the 
great Wadi al Fardi, which had flowed through 


28 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Taizerbo to Jaghabub and thence past the oasis 
of Siwa to the Nile. Henceforth Kurafra would 
no longer be a myth but an actuality. But for 
how long? As vain to attempt to dam the ocean 
as these steadily advancing dunes of sand. An- 
other year or so and pyramid and temple might 
disappear forever. 

Lifting the shamadan above his head, Calthrop 
examined the walls. They were devoid of orna- 
mentation. This upper chamber obviously had 
played no part in the religious functions of the 
priesthood of Amon-Ra. There was no means of 
telling whether the last visitor had been there ten, 
ten hundred, or ten thousand years ago. Higher 
up where the walls drew closer together it was 
harder to see, and Calthrop, who was an agile 
climber, managed to get a few good handholds and 
swing himself up nearly to the capstone. For a 
moment, badly winded, he hung there in the dark- 
ness like a bat, looking down between his feet at 
the glow from the shamadan. Then holding him- 
self by one hand while he braced himseli with his 
feet, he peered with the flashlight into every aper- 
ture. 

Everywhere it caught on rough ocher-red sur- 


29 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


faces except one, where some smaller stones had 
been heaped together. Pushing them aside he dis- 
closed a blackened box, or receptacle, about eigh- 
teen inches square. His position was awkward; he 
had but a single free hand and that held the light, 
and as he shifted the object to his shoulder his foot 
slipped. For a moment or two he swung there and 
then fell heavily to the floor below, striking his 
head a violent blow against the edge of his find. 

When he came to himself he found that he was 
severely bruised from head to foot and suffering 
from a sprained wrist. The flashlight was smashed 
to atoms. He lay there several minutes more, try- 
ing to collect himself, while the wind shrieked and 
roared through the cracks of the pyramid. 

The gibleh had brought the sand storm, and it 
was evidently centering among the ruins of Kura- 
fra. And then Calthrop remembered the casket, 
and in spite of his pain crawled to his knees and 
shifted the light from the shamadan this way and 
that along the floor until he found it lying un- 
harmed near by. The hide of which it was made 
was black with age and hard as iron, and the pe- 
culiar shapelessness of the affair gave it somewhat 


30 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the appearance of an enormous dried shark’s egg. 
With the shamadan elevated upon his haversack, 
he sat down and lifted the casket upon his knees. 
As he did so he found that he was trembling. 

“Nonsense!” he said aloud. “It’s probably 
empty, anyhow!” 

His heart beat like a tom-tom as he grasped the 
cover, and when he attempted to lift it the leather 
hinges broke, discharging a small cloud of fine dust. 
Raising the shamadan above his head, Calthrop 
looked inside. 

III 

“T lifted the shamadan above my head and 
looked inside,” said Calthrop. “‘Try to picture to 
yourself what a tremendous moment that was for 
me! I was pretty well done after six days on camel 
back. Id travelled nearly two hundred and fifty 
miles. I’d fallen twenty feet and given my head a 
beastly knock. I’d just discovered the ruins of a 
city that no white man knew existed. I was more 
or less lost in the heart of the Libyan Desert. I 
didn’t know whether I was ever going to get back 
or not, and I had a queer feeling that I wasn’t 
alone in the place. I can’t explain it. 


31 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“All those elements combined to give the per- 
formance a curious feeling of unreality. Was I 
there, or was I dreaming it? Or was I some one 
else? Was I sitting cross-legged inside a pyramid 
five thousand years old, holding this thing on my 
knees, or where was I? And outside the gibleh 
was shrieking like all the demons of hell let loose, 
and the sand came rattling and sifting through 
the cracks and swirling across the floor. The sham- 
adan flickered and burned blue. I seemed to hear 
shouts and screams all around, above and below. 
And that box wasn’t mine! Yes, I confess it, I 
hesitated a few seconds before lifting the cover. 
And then I did! At first I couldn’t make out any- 
thing, and then I saw there was a mess of papers 
and— Well, I’ll show you what I found, exactly as 
I found it.” 

Calthrop got up from the dinner table, at which 
they were seated, and went to his cabin. He had 
returned from his trip only that afternoon, but 
the members of the party had already learned the 
details from General Hunter of how the caravan 
had nearly perished of thirst seven days from 
Bukara, had been found by a flyer sent out by the 


32 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Frontier-Districts Administration, and how Cal- 
throp himself had been finally rescued by a troop 
of the Camel Corps Patrol under Major Bagley 
himself. 

He was hollow-eyed, burned black, with cracked 
lips, almost a wreck, but obviously laboring under 
an exhilaration that approached hysteria. Some- 
thing had happened to the man; something that 
had profoundly affected him; something concern- 
ing which they had not cared to ask him. 

He returned, carrying the casket in his arms, 
and they watched him breathlessly as he held it 
above the candles. The only sound was the lap 
_ of the current against the river bank, the scream 
of the frogs, the chanting of the sailors to the 
faint pulsations of the daraboukeh. Through the 
plate-glass windows of the saloon a white moon 
looked in upon a table decorated with flowers and 
silverware. The Princess Zeeka, smoking a tiny 
cigarette in a long jade holder, sat with her chin 
in her hands, her elbows among the wineglasses, 
her eyes fastened expectantly upon Calthrop’s 
face. 

“‘Move those glasses, will you?” he said to his 


33 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


sister. ‘‘Push the candles nearer together please, 
Excellency. Yes, I want you all to have the story 
just as it unfolded itself to me, step by step. What 
that box contained might have changed the whole 
history of civilization !” 

He waited while Miss Calthrop arranged the 
glasses, then placed the box in the centre of the 
table and opened it. 

“This is what I found!” 

And Calthrop held up to their astonished gaze 
a Roman short sword and scabbard, with its ac- 
companying belt, thickly studded with semi-pre- 
cious stones. Even after two thousand years the 
facets of the jewels reflected the candlelight un- 
dimmed. Professor Troy examined it carefully. 

“Extraordinary! It is of the time of Tiberius. 
Congratulations, Calthrop. You'll be famous. 
Even the coins of Hadrian found in the Fayum 
created a sensation, and they were nothing to 
this.” 

But the princess looked slightly disappointed. 

“T see that you were joking,” she said. ‘All 
you meant was that a sword might have changed 
the destinies of Europe.” 


34 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“Wait a moment,” he answered excitedly. 
“No, I did not refer to the sword, but to some- 
thing else—that the box once contained.” 

“What was that?” asked Ismail Bey. “And 
what has become of it?” 

“These will tell you,” he replied, lifting a bun- 
dle of letters. “‘Do you read German easily?” he 
asked the princess. 

“T do not like to read German,” she answered. 

“Give them to me. I will make a try at it,” 
said Professor Troy. “I spent three years at 
Heidelberg in my extreme youth.” 

‘How soiled they are!” exclaimed the princess. 
“IT am glad I do not have to read them.” 

“Do you remember our conversation about 
Christianity the evening before I left,” went on 
Calthrop, “‘and how the professor told us about 
the legend of the Lost Gospel, and suggested 
that——”’ 

“By George, Calthrop!’ exploded Troy. “‘ This 
is a letter from William Hohenzollern, former Em- 
peror of Germany !” 

“That does not interest me in the least,” re- 
marked the princess. 


35 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Troy wiped his glasses and spread the crumpled 
sheet upon the snowy damask before him. 
‘Listen !”’ he commanded. 


““¢ AT THE MANEUVERS, 
** August 20, I913. 

*¢ My dear Harnach-Hulsen : I trust that by this 
time you are safely at Jerusalem. You remember 
our interesting talk about a year ago, when Car- 
dinal Kopp, Prince-Bishop of Breslau, and our 
friends Von Tirpitz and Von Bernhardi were pres- 
ent, and we discussed the biological aspect of war. 
At that time your remarks struck me as of great 
force. When you have the time I should be glad 
to have you set them down in writing. I shall see 
that they are disseminated through the proper 
educational, military, and ecclesiastic channels, in 
order that the virility of my people may not be 
permitted to decay through the insidious and de- 
moralizing influence of an effeminate desire for 
peace which dominates our age and threatens to 
spoil the soul of the German people according to 
its true moral significance. War is not merely a 
necessary element in the life of nations, but an 

36 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


indispensable factor of culture, in which a truly 
civilized nation finds the highest expression of 
strength and vitality. 

‘Tn answer to the query in your last letter, I 
distinguish between two different kinds of revela- 
tion—a progressive historical revelation and a 
purely religious one, paving the way to the future 
coming of the Messiah. As to the first, there is 
not the smallest doubt in my mind that God con- 
stantly reveals himself through the human race 
created by Him, through some great savant or 
priest or king, whether among the heathens, Jews 
or Christians. 

*““The second kind of revelation, the more reli- 
gious kind, is that which is introduced from Abra- 
ham onward, slowly, but with foresight, all-wise 
and all-knowing, the actual revelation of the Al- 
mighty. 

“*¢Ts not His Word our authority? Delitzsch, as 
a good theologian, should not forget that our great 
teacher Luther taught us to sing and believe, Das 
Wort sie sollen lassen stehn. 

““*Tt must be our guide until the Messiah, an- 
nounced and foreshadowed by the prophets and 


37 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


psalmists, shall at last declare himself. In what 
form or when the Messiah may appear no one 
knows. It may be in the far future or he may be 
on earth among us even now, unrevealed save to 
those who perceive and understand, beggar or em- 
peror. But the day arrives! 

“*¢Unfortunately, the condition of Her Majesty 
has become worse. My heart is filled with the 
most grievous sorrow. God with us! 

‘“‘*With heartiest thanks and many greetings, I 


in always . ; 
rema a9 “Your sincere friend, 


“WILLIAM I. R.’ ” 


‘“‘A characteristic epistle, but not highly illu- 
minating,’”’ declared Ismail Bey. ‘‘ What else have 
you got there, Calthrop?”’ 

“Did not this same emperor recently remarry ?”’ 
the Princess Zeeka inquired of Troy. 

The professor ignored her, for he regarded her 
as a bore. Besides, he was engaged at that mo- 
ment in wondering whom William had in mind in 
penning the words “‘ beggar or emperor.” 

“Yes, dear lady, he did remarry,” answered 
Ismail Bey. ‘‘But, having deprived him of the oc- 

38 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


cupation of war, you should not begrudge him the 
consolation of love.”’ 

“The next in order is Harnach-Hulsen’s answer- 
ing letter to the Kaiser,” said Calthrop. ‘Will 
you help us out again, professor ?”’ 

Troy nodded. 

“IT knew Harnach-Hulsen years ago at Heidel- 
berg. I recall him chiefly as a duellist for the 
Saxe-Gothas. He had quite a record.” 

“Well, here is his letter. It is a long one. Take 
your time.” 

Professor Troy drew his chair toward the table 
so that the candlelight fell upon the bundle of 
sheets in his hand. They were covered with a fine 
running script. 

“He dates his epistle from the Pyramid Em- 
peror William IJ,” he remarked dryly, glancing at 
his host. 

“Yan. 29, IQ14. 

““¢ Imperial and Royal Majesty and All-Highest 
Lord: With most humble gratitude I acknowledge 
Your Majesty’s wire received at Cairo. I can al- 
ready say without egotism that Your Majesty’s 
interest in this expedition has borne surprising 


39 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


fruit. I have in fact made discoveries of the high- 
est archzological importance, in their way rival- 
ling those of Schliemann. 

“““To take matters in order: After leaving Bu- 
kara we proceeded northeastward toward the 
Fayum for five days without finding water, al- 
though assured by our Berbers that there were 
desert wells within a distance of two hundred and 
fifty kilometres. They may have had some sin- 
ister plan. I do not trust these people. The only 
way to get along with them is by dominating them 
absolutely. The travelling was exceedingly diff- 
cult, owing to the immense dunes of white sand 
thrown up by the wind, which drift quite a long 
distance each year. To cross these dunes is slow 
and exhausting work, and it is better where possi- 
ble to follow the hatias between them and to cross 
at the low places. It is hard to shape any very 
definite course. 

“However, on the seventh day, about sunset, 
when our camels were giving signs of exhaustion, 
I thought I saw from the top of one of the dunes, 
at a distance of about a mile, something projecting 
from the sand that looked like an outcropping of 


40 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


limestone. To my great excitement this proved 
to be the top of a small pyramid almost entirely 
submerged; and shortly, at about the right dis- 
tance, we came upon the two pylons of a temple. 
It is probable that had we not discovered these 
they would have been obliterated entirely by the 
moving sands within a few years. 

“Here we established our camp and, having 
measured and photographed the surface remains, 
began excavating on the side of the pyramid 
toward the temple, where the stones appeared to 
have been previously tampered with. 

‘We are proceeding slowly also to excavate the 
outer surface of the pylons, and have already laid 
bare not only the usual hymns to Amon-Ra and 
Sebek, the crocodile god, but also inscriptions 
made during the reign of Darius and added to by 
Nektanebes, as well as a Greek inscription in sixty- 
six lines dating from the second year of the reign 
of the Emperor Galba, A. D. 69. We have named 
the pyramid, subject to your gracious permission, 
the Pyramid of the Emperor William IT. 

‘“‘“We broke very easily through the outer wall 
of the pyramid and found a rough passage leading 


AI 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


to an unfinished empty chamber. Charred embers 
and a roll of matting upon the floor showed that 
robbers had once used it for a hiding place. Con- 
cealed in a recess, we found a small chest contain- 
ing a jewelled belt and short sword, a few gold 
coins, and a papyrus many metres inlength. This 
last appears to be a sort of journal, in the form of 
a letter addressed to the Emperor Tiberius at 
Capri by one Gaius Marcus Claudius Silenus, a 
Roman gentleman travelling in the East under the 
imperial protection. The Latin text is hard to de- 
cipher, probably owing to the fact that it was 
written in many different localities and under 
varying conditions. I am translating it as fast as 
I can with due regard for our other work. 

“The manuscript is dated at Thebes, in the 
seven hundred and sixty-sixth year from the found- 
ing of the city of Rome, and after the customary 
complimentary salutations to Tiberius begins with 
a brief statement that the writer, having killed 
many crocodiles and lions—these last with the aid 
of hunting cheetahs of the celebrated breed trained 
by the Ptolemys—has learned of the ruins of an 
ancient city called Kurafra, lying on the edge of 


42 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the Western Desert, which he contemplates visit- 
ing. } 

‘¢Ffe then proceeds to give a long and unneces- 
sarily detailed account of his travels in Cappa- 
docia, Armenia, and Syria, where he was the guest 
of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, on his way 
to Cesarea to stay with his cousin, Claudia Pro- 
cula, wife of Pontius Pilatus, the procurator of 
Judea. He describes Herod as a drunkard, unfit 
for kingship, and laboring under the delusion of 
being the Messias of the Jews, and declares that 
he caused the murder of Iokanaan because the 
latter denied the truth of his claim. I regard this 
as of some historic interest, as it is in flat contra- 
diction of Josephus. 

““¢T find the work of translating the papyrus 
most fatiguing, as I have broken my reading 
glasses. The manuscript contains a description of 
the miraculous healing of Joanna, the wife of 
Chuza, Herod’s chief steward, by the thaumaturge 
known as Jesus, or Joshua, of Nazareth, whom 
Tokanaan had proclaimed to be the Messias of 
the Jews, and who was working many miracles 
throughout Galilee and Samaria. Silenus writes 


43 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


that there is no question about the authenticity of 
the various cures, since Chuza and Joanna are 
truthful people, as is also Jairus, a prominent citi- 
zen of Capernaum, whose little daughter was 
brought back to life by the prophet. He also tells 
how a Jew named Lazarus was similarly raised 
from the dead, and recounts many restorations of 
lepers, paralytics, palsied, deaf and dumb, and 
those officially certified as insane. He describes the 
great excitement attendant upon these miracles, 
and mentions a letter that he has received from 
Claudia Procula, his cousin, asking him to look 
into the matter with a view to the possibility of 
inducing the prophet to come to Jerusalem to try 
to cure Pilate of diabetes. 

“*¢Silenus then tells of how he went on in the 
company of Herod Antipas, Herodias, and Salome, 
her daughter, to Jerusalem, where Pilate, who had 
come up from Cesarea for the Feast of the Pass- 
over, was occupying the palace of Herod the Great. 
He describes how annoyed Antipas is at finding 
the palace in which he was brought up as a boy 
commandeered by the Romans, and how it has 
resulted in a certain coldness between himself and 


44 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the tetrarch, whom he had just been visiting on 
the friendliest terms. Here he finds to his surprise 
that his cousin Procula is already, without as yet 
having seen Christ, more than half a convert to 
his teachings, fully believing that he is the long- 
foretold Messias of the Jews. He also relates how 
Pilate is very unpopular with all classes, but par- 
ticularly the Pharisees, and how they are always 
plotting his removal by trying to lead him into 
acts giving the impression that he is disloyal to 
the emperor. 

“““Then comes a description of Christ’s entry 
into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the temple, and of 
his accusation by the officers of the Sanhedrin of 
treason to Cesar, as a result of which he is placed 
under arrest and brought before Pilate. 

“Next follows an account of how Silenus is 
sent secretly to Christ with an offer of freedom if 
he will cure Pilate of disease, which is refused, 
and of the trial of Christ, with its background of 
political plot and counterplot. Pilate, fearful that 
unless he accedes to the demand of the Sanhedrin 
and turns Christ over to them he will be accused 
of treason to Rome, recalls the presence of Herod 


45 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


in the city and accordingly seeks to escape respon- 
sibility for either the release or the delivery of the 
prisoner to the Jews by sending Silenus to Herod 
with the suggestion that, as Christ is a Galilean, 
he comes within the latter’s jurisdiction. But the 
tetrarch is too wily to be caught and sends the 
prisoner back to Pilate at the preetorium, inwardly 
pleased at the dilemma in which the Roman pro- 
curator finds himself. 

‘¢¢Silenus describes how Pilate, realizing that he 
cannot evade his duty, becomes greatly disturbed, 
and representing that he will take the case under 
advisement sends Silenus to Christ to interrogate 
him as to his actual doctrines and to determine 
whether they are treasonable. Procula, unknown 
to her husband, insists on going with him. They 
find Christ in a dungeon of the Sanhedrin and 
have a lengthy conversation with him. They also 
seek him out later and continue the discussion of 
various phases of his doctrines, more particularly 
with respect to the ultimate determination of con- 
tested issues. 

‘“*T cannot say that these alleged interpreta- 
tions of Christ’s philosophy, even if genuine, add 


46 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


anything to the German theory of culture so often 
elucidated by Your Royal and Gracious Majesty 
to Von Bernhardi, Von Tirpitz, and myself. In fact, 
it may so easily cause a natural confusion and mis- 
understanding as to our biological point of view 
that it perhaps would better be suppressed in the 
higher interests of the state. I am in grave doubt 
as to what course to pursue, as any suspicion of 
our discovery on the part of the public would 
doubtless result in the demand for a complete dis- 
closure, the refusal of which might arouse unfavor- 
able inference. 

**¢Would that Your Gracious Majesty were here 
to direct my thoughts into harmony with the pur- 
poses of Almighty God! I am writing this letter 
in the unlikely hope that I may be able to trans- 
mit it to Bukara by some passing caravan. 

“¢To my great satisfaction, I learned from your 
telegram that there had been an improvement in 
the health of Her Majesty. May God help further. 

«With the deepest respect, unlimited fidelity 
and gratitude, I am, All-Highest, Your Imperial 
and Royal Majesty’s most humble servant, 

““¢MAx HARNACH-HULSEN,’”’ 


47 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


‘“‘Mashallah !”’ shouted Ismail Bey. ‘‘ Where is 
this papyrus?” 

He started to look into the casket, but Calthrop 
restrained him by a touch upon the shoulder. 

““A moment, Excellency, if you please! Letus 
take one thing at a time. There is still one other 
paper—an unfinished letter from Trent to his 
mother. That letter I will read to you myself: 


**¢PyRAMID WILLIAM II. 
“Jan. 29, 1914. 

“*< Dearest Mother : At last I can tell you the mar- 
vellous news! We’ve found Kurafra! Do you 
realize what that means? You can’t blame me 
for being excited. Who wouldn’t be? But Kurafra 
is nothing to what we found there! Our caravan 
had a terrible time crossing the dunes, and we 
were nearly all in when we found the pyramid that 
marks the site. Of course we both went nearly 
crazy. I’m sure Harnach-Hulsen would have got 
drunk if there had been anything to get drunk on 
but laghbi. As it was, he made a long speech and 
toasted the Kaiser in lukewarm coffee. Then he 
had a sort of dedication ceremony and baptized 

48 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


the pyramid, “I name thee Wilhelm der Zweite.” 
It was funny as anything, although he took it 
dead seriously. 

“**T didn’t grudge it to him, for I found the Lost 
Gospel! H-H didn’t! He may claim to, but he 
didn’t! I got climbing around inside the peak of 
old Wilhelm Secundus, and there it was, in a box, 
where it had lain for nineteen hundred years! You 
see, Marcus Claudius Silenus, who wrote it to send 
to the Emperor Tiberius, evidently hadn’t time to 
finish it at Jerusalem, and so he took it along with 
him when he started off to hunt for Kurafra in 29 
A.D. H-H says that what undoubtedly happened 
was that Silenus was murdered by robbers, who 
hid their booty in the pyramid and forgot to come 
back for it, or were killed or something. 

“Anyhow, we’ve got it! And it’s the greatest 
find since the Sinaitic Septuagint, the Codex Aleph 
as they call it, and infinitely more important. For 
it is an actual Fifth Gospel, in which the writer 
has written down with the greatest care the exact 
words of Christ about a lot of things that have al- 
ways been the subject of argument. For example, 
regarding the individual ownership of property. 


49 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


But, far more important, his ideas about war! 
This wonderful old papyrus is going to change 
everything. The language is so simple, yet so 
beautiful and convincing. Only to think that the 
fingers that wrote the letters that are lying now 
before me had just touched those of Jesus! I can’t 
sleep. I can hardly eat. With this direct revela- 
tion and injunction from Christ’s own lips, there 
can never be any such thing as war again! 

‘“*¢Harnach-Hulsen does not seem very well. I 
am afraid the heat has done him up. He has been 
acting very queer and grouchy for a couple of says. 
He——’ 99 


“Why did he not finish the letter ?”’ asked Zeeka. 

“That you must judge for yourself.” Calthrop 
placed the letter with the others and poured him- 
self a glass of brandy and soda. 

‘‘Now to go back a little, let me resume my nar- 
rative. I’ve told you how I fell with the casket in 
my arms and hit my head and probably passed out 
for a while; and how I finally came to, grubbed 
around for the box, and opened it. Finding the 
sword, of course, gave me a stupendous kick; but 


5° 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


naturally it was nothing to the thrill I got out of 
the letters. I’d give a lot to be able to paint the 
thing for you exactly as it was.” 

He hesitated, put down his glass, and fumbled 
for his words. 

“Vou see, a very queer sort of thing happened. 
I’m the last person in the world for that kind of 
an experience. The wind was raising Cain all 
around and through the pyramid, and the flame of 
my shamadan kept flickering—what’s the word 
they user—‘guttering,’ I guess—and made weird 
shadows all over the place and gave me a feeling 
that I was not alone in there. I could feel—pres- 
ences—emanations or something. And as I read 
the letters—it’s hard for me to explain—I can only 
describe it by saying that I lost my time sense; or 
rather, as it were, I saw time as a whole—going 
both ways at once. I—well, I seemed to be de- 
tached from the whole business. It was as if every- 
thing had telescoped—reversed itself or something 
—and turned inside out. It was quite weird, I 
can tell you.” 

He shut his eyes and passed his hand across his 
forehead. 


5I 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“‘Of course the bang on my head had something 
to do with it no doubt,—exhaustion and all that— 
but I found myself looking very intently at the 
flame of the shamadan. I suppose there is such a 
thing as autohypnosis. Anyhow, at first it seemed 
to be just a blur of radiance. The air was full of 
flying sand and the flame danced and wavered 
and tore at the wick—and right there It—what- 
ever It was—happened.”’ 

He pulled one of the candles in front of him. 
Through the window a broad, glittering moon 
path lay like a silver drugget across the Nile. Cal- 
throp pointed into the flame. 

‘As I looked,” he said slowly, “‘ the blur focussed 
and everything became very clear—and distinct 
—and still—if you get what I mean—and small. 
I seemed to be inside the flame, looking out, and 
at the same time to be outside looking in, and see- 
ing myself in there looking out, as if the whole 
thing were going on at the wrong end of a spy- 
glass and I had gone through. I know it sounds 
quite mad.” 

He laughed nervously. 

‘‘ Anyhow, it was all more like feeling than see- 
ing; a visual awareness, if there is such a thing, 


52 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


that I was sitting there inside that blooming pyra- 
mid in the middle of a sand-storm, fishing inside 
the box by the light of the shamadan. And I felt 
sure—you'll probably think me an utter idiot— 
that there was something in there near me that I 
can’t possibly describe. The flame burned up 
bright again until the inside of the pyramid was 
bright as day and I could see right through it, as if 
it had been made of glass. And out of the middle 
of the light a great thing like a gigantic seesaw 
ran up through the pyramid into the sky—into 
eternity. Something said ‘Don’t touch it!’ Then 
I knew that the Something was myself and that 
the seesaw was Time. I found that I was sliding 
along it, faster and faster, until I was shooting 
out into space with the velocity of light. 

“As I flew I saw everything that ever hap- 
pened. 

“You’ve seen those moving pictures that illus- 
trate Einstein’s theory, showing a human being 
shot into space at such a rate of speed that he 
goes flying back through the centuries, overtaking 
and passing the former years? Well, it was like 
that, you know. I saw everything that ever hap- 
pened—only backward. 


53 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“‘T saw the desert floor sinking lower and lower 
and the pylons of the temple lifting higher and 
higher, until temple and pyramid both stood free 
and clear of the sand and joined by a long avenue © 
of sphinxes. I saw caravans of camels and Bedou- 
ins on fast hajins—hawk-faced men with cruel 
mouths—coming and going. I saw the pyramid 
being built and the slaves dragging the stones into 
place up an inclined spiral plane that wound 
around it. The country was soft and green and 
covered with palm trees, and the air was sweet 
and laden with moisture. And then I came rush- 
ing down aslant Time again and seeing it all for- 
ward instead of backward, the desert sand drift- 
ing in, the pylons and the pyramid sinking back, 
back, until I was looking into a fire surrounded by 
a circle of peering Arab faces, and then I saw that 
the fire was my own shamadan and the circle of 
faces was the same face repeated over and over 
again—the face of old Ibrahim, who was sitting 
cross-legged there behind me.” 

Calthrop laughed again—apologetically. 

“How he had found his way there across the 
dunes in that sand storm I can’t imagine, but there 


54 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


he was, and his presence gave me considerable re- 
lief. He said that he had stood outside for a long 
time and shouted to me, but the wind must have 
carried away his voice. I had begun to feel very 
chilly. Ibrahim went snooping back in the dark- 
ness and returned presently with a handful of 
brush and a few cakes of camel dung, with which 
we built a fire, and then I pulled out my brandy 
flask and mixed a couple of stiff drinks with the 
water from my zemzemieh. He showed no reluc- 
tance about taking it. 

“‘Did you ever see an Arab partly boiled? It’s 
a very curious sight. I fancy we were both pretty 
well lit up. At all events, he told me the story of 
his life, and whenever he showed signs of weaken- 
ing I’d give him another drink. He was eighty- 
two years old, he said, and had seen many, many 
things. I let him run on, and by and by he got 
down to what I was after. 

“It was, he said, in the thirteen-hundred-and- 
thirty-sixth year of the Hejireh that there came to 
their town of Bukara a red gentleman—a khawaja 
el hamri—named Harnach-Hulsen, and a white 
gentleman—a khawaja el abiad—named Trent. 


55 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


When, however, they learned that these gentlemen 
sought to find Kurafra, the Forbidden City, which 
Allah had caused to disappear, they were afraid 
and refused to go with them; but eventually the 
strangers overcame their fears with gold, and they 
went. Then he, Mohammed Ali Ibrahim ben 
Rahim, from the knowledge handed down to him 
by his great-grandfather, who had it from his 
great-grandfather, led them here in five days’ 
journey, to their great joy. Now, there was at 
that time a well in this place which has since filled 
with sand. 

“ Accordingly they made their camp at the other 
end of the hatia beside the well, but the two gen- 
tlemen pitched their tent outside the pyramid, and 
Ibrahim remained with them to serve them. Each 
day they superintended the digging, and trans- 
scribed what was written upon the walls of the 
temple and made photographs. At night they 
were busy inside their tent. When they found the 
chest inside the pyramid they were both very much 
excited and abandoned everything else in order to 
decipher the papyrus. They sat about all day, 
and because of the heat in the tent they went in- 

56 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


side the pyramid and worked there, coming out at 
evening and meal-times. 

“Then one night they had a violent row. Ibra- 
him did not know what it was about, but he felt 
sure it had something to do with the papyrus. It 
was a still, moonlit night and the Arabs could hear 
the red gentleman shouting inside the tent at the 
other end of the hatia. They, of course, did not 
know what he was saying; but they could make 
out references to the Prophet Christ and the phrase 
‘mahr ve khareb,’ signifying ‘annihilation.’ The 
voices rose higher and higher, until the Arabs be- 
came very much terrified, and at length the two 
gentlemen came out of the tent. The khawaAja el 
abiad had the box in his arms and the khawAja el 
hamri was trying to take it away from him. The 
struggle became so violent that the entire contents, 
including the sword, fell out upon the sand. The 
white gentleman grabbed the papyrus, thrust it 
behind his back, and began pleading with the red 
gentleman. But the latter seemed to have gone 
mad, for he picked up the sword and drove it 
through the white gentleman’s breast. Then he 
wrenched the papyrus out of the hand of the 


37 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


dead man and threw it into the middle of the 
fire.” 

Calthrop’s lips quivered as he reached into the 
box and removed a blackened stick to which ad- 
hered a charred irregular strip of papyrus or 
parchment about two inches wide. 

“Ad Tiberium Cesarem Imperatorem Ca- 
pree,’’’ spelled out Ismail Bey. ‘‘‘Magistro Meo 
Salutem—’ Mashallah! It is a part of the letter 
to Tiberius!” 

“The Lost Gospel!” whispered Calthrop. “All 
that is left of what might have changed the destiny 
of the world!” And he burst into tears. 

There was a prolonged silence. The princess 
laid her hand gently on Calthrop’s arm. Her own 
eyes were wet. 

“Do not cry,” she said. ‘‘ Please do not cry!” 

“T’m sorry,” he answered. “I’m a bit strung 
up.” He ground his handkerchief into his eyes. 
“Well, after Harnach-Hulsen had burned up the 
papyrus he went back into the tent, and Ibrahim 
and the other Arabs ran away. When they came 
back in the morning Trent was dead and Harnach- 
Hulsen was still in the tent.” 


58 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


He stopped and took a sip of water. 

“And what became of the German?” asked 
Ismail Bey. 

“That is highly significant,” said Calthrop. 
“When the Arabs realized what had happened 
they were so fearful lest they should be accused 
of the murder that they killed Harnach-Hulsen 
and buried the two of them in the same grave.” 

Again he paused. | 

“So the world will never know—” began his 
sister as she stared at the fragment of burnt papy- 
rus. Somehow, the past seemed very close to all 
of them—the past which is part of the present, 
and of the future. From the neighboring dahabeah 
floated laughter, the tinkle of silver upon glass, the 
wheeze of a graphophone playing “The Barnyard 
Blues,” while a myriad frogs shrilled in the shadoofs 
—lineal descendants of the same batrachians that 
had sung to sleep the infant Moses and acclaimed 
his finding by the daughter of the Pharaoh. A 
great star hung like a sconce of liquid fire over the 
Temple of Karnak—just such a star as had guided 
the Magi to the manger of Bethlehem, where lay 
the infant Christ. 


59 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


‘There isn’t much more to tell,” said Calthrop _ 
at length. ‘‘Ibrahim said the rest of the Arabs had 
never returned to Bukara and that he himself had 
lived in Siwa for five years before going back to 
his family. His story had pretty well knocked me 
out. The wind was shrieking outside the pyramid, 
the fire was almost dead, and it was getting terri- 
bly cold in there. I wouldn’t have cared if Eblis 
himself had been waiting for me out there in the 
hatia. I threw the things into the casket, bundled 
up the rest of my stuff, and told Ibrahim that I 
was going back to the caravan, no matter what. 
He protested at first; but finally he gave in, and 
we went out and found the camels huddled against 
one another, half buried in sand. The wind nearly 
tore me off my beast’s back, and whirled my 
blanket and raincoat in flapping circles above my 
head. The air was a thick sheet of stinging, biting 
dust and grit that cut like glass. The screaming 
gusts seemed to tear my eyes from their sockets. 
All sense of direction was blotted out, like the sky. 
One could only feel. 

“‘T don’t know how we ever made the caravan 
or how we managed to stick it out when we did. 

6o 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


But eventually the wind died down, and at dawn 
the sky was clear and the air still. By nine o’clock 
the heat had become suffocating. We were seven 
days from Bukara, and without water our chances 
of getting back there were small. While the Arabs 
were packing the camels I climbed up to the top 
of the gherd, from which I had spied the pyramid 
the night before. What I’m going to tell you isn’t 
the least queer part of it all, either. There wasn’t 
a sign of either temple or pyramid Wilhelm der 
Zweite left! During the night the sand had com- 
pletely covered both. The desert had finished its 
job!” 

He lit a cigarette at one of the candles. 

“‘Bagley’s told you the rest, of course—how they 
spotted us with a flyer and the Camel Corps Patrol 
picked us up about ninety kilometres out of Bukara. 
You can bet I was glad to see them! I had to 
abandon my caravan, but they gave me a fresh 
hajin and— Well, here Iam!” 

He began gathering up the papers. Ismail Bey 
watched him, frowning. “An efficient person— 
from his own view-point—this Harnach-Hulsen !”’ 
he mused. ‘‘But he need not have been afraid. 

61 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


The world would never have accepted it, the Gos- 
pel of Peace.”’ 

“Very efficient; very learned,” agreed Professor 
Troy. “And, if you will believe it, as a young man 
very sentimental.” 

“Didn’t he write a book on ‘Civilization and 
Decay’?”’ inquired Miss Calthrop. 

“Ves; and in it he gave warning of the danger 
to civilization of the rising tide of barbarism. The 
Kaiser gave him the Black Eagle for it,”’ said Troy. 

“How beautiful the sword is!” exclaimed the 
Princess Zeeka. “‘How the hilt sparkles! I know 
many of the stones. We have them in Russia, set 
in our icons. There is beryl and topaz and tur- 
quoise and lapis lazuli. Even a sword can be very 
beautiful.” 

Ismail Bey, holding it under the candles, drew 
the blade part way from the jewelled scabbard. 
The princess examined it eagerly. 

“How bright it is, in spite of its great age!” she 
said. ‘‘Is it not strange for such an old sword to 
be so bright?” 

The Egyptian turned it slowly. The silken 
shades of the candles tinged the blade a dull red. 

62 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“What is that thin black line under the hilt?” 
asked the princess. 

Ismail Bey glanced at her through his eyebrows. 

“That, dear lady,” he answered reverently, ‘‘is 
the blood of a very gallant gentleman.” 

For several minutes there was no sound save 
the chirping of the frogs and the melancholy 
challenge, ‘‘Allahu akbar! La ilaha illa-llah!” 

Then a footstep clattered in the passage, and 
Hawkins, the wireless operator, immaculate in 
white duck, entered cap in hand. 

“Beg pardon,” he said, ‘‘but Jerusalem is broad- 
casting, and—the French have just entered the 
Ruhr!” 


63 





POSTSCRIPT 





POSTSCRIPT 


THE fascination of the character of Christ grows 
with the centuries. More and more the Western 
World tends to view his teachings as the key to 
human happiness and progress. The most ad- 
vanced thinkers of to-day find nothing antago- 
nistic to science in Christianity. 

But with this renewed and expanding confidence 
in the truth of Christ’s teachings has come a crav- 
ing for more knowledge as to what those doctrines 
actually were and how they should be applied 
under present conditions. What did Christ ac- 
tually teach as to the ownership of private prop- 
erty, as to obedience to temporal authority, as to 
war? Were His words to be taken literally or al- 
legorically? Would his utterances be the same if 
he were alive to-day? In a word, how far is our 
present civilization in harmony with his teachings ? 
Are we followers of Christ? Or of Cesar? 

Whether the injunctions contained in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount and other parts of the Gospels 
are susceptible of practical application has always 
been a subject for argument. ‘The view-point 
ranges from the strict interpretation of Tolstoi’s 


07 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


“My Religion” to the vaguest philosophical gen- 
eralizations by virtue of which to compete for 
earthly place and possessions, and to eat, drink, and 
be merry, is to be a Christian, and which if correct 
would indicate that Christ taught nothing essen- 
tially new and perhaps really meant nothing at all. 

There is a very general feeling, however, that 
much which figures under the guise of Christian- 
ity is not Christianity at all, and that many of 
those who assume to interpret the doctrines of 
Christ can hardly be classed as Christians. It is 
safe to say that modern statecraft and business 
enterprise are conducted with little reference to 
the Beatitudes, and that much of the preaching 
from so-called Christian pulpits would be listened 
to by the Saviour if He heard it with at least a 
certain mild surprise. This, because we all know 
it in our hearts to be so, is the reason for the per- 
sistent popularity of books dealing with the incon- 
sistency of modern life with the simple teachings 
of the Saviour, wherein He is pictured as returning 
once again to earth as He visited Jerusalem dur- 
ing the Passion. 

One thing is certain. Vast multitudes of intelli- 
gent human beings attempt sincerely, and more or 
less successfully, to live in strict accordance with 
what they believe to have been His instructions. 


68 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Anything which would tend to clarify what He 
taught or to explain and define his ideas upon cer- 
tain subjects would be received with eagerness and 
instantly put into practice. Did Christ forbid war 
or did He teach that war was inevitable and nat- 
ural? Did He teach the sanctity of private prop- 
erty or did He teach socialism? Did He make 
any pretence of attempting to lay down any pre- 
cepts for the conduct of business or politics? 
How convenient it is to answer the last question 
in the negative! Undoubtedly that was the point 
of view of William Hohenzollern. 

Let us at least agree that if a faithful contem- 
porary record had been made of exactly what 
Christ had literally taught about these mattters, 
and that record should now for the first time come 
unexpectedly to light, its discovery might be at- 
tended with far-reaching results to the body 
politic. 

This theme, around which the story is woven, 
was suggested to the writer by Mr. Maxwell Per- 
kins, to whom the story is dedicated. His idea 
was that there might have been another, or Fifth, 
Gospel contemporary with Christ, the existence of 
which had never been suspected and which might 
be assumed for fictional purposes to contain teach- 
ings so revolutionary, or at least antagonistic to 


69 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


our present economic and social theories, that its 
finders chose to destroy it rather than to plunge 
civilization into chaos. 

From the point of view of construction the nar- 
rative presented unusual difficulties. In the first 
place, it was “‘a story within a story,” for, while 
it dealt ostensibly with the present finding of a 
lost manuscript, its vital interest lay in the nature 
of the Gospel itself and how it came to be written 
two thousand years ago. The problem was how 
to bring the past in a drama of to-day with suffi- 
cient vividness before the footlights in defiance 
of the ‘“‘unities.” 

Second, since it was inconceivable that any 
writer should presume to reproduce an imaginary 
conversation with the Saviour, it followed that the 
contents of the document must remain throughout 
a mystery and its startling nature be reflected only 
through the reaction of those described as finding 
and deciphering it; there must be no living char- 
acter introduced into the narrative who had read 
the manuscript or knew even by hearsay what it 
contained, since in that case the reader would 
feel cheated if the author did not disclose its 
contents. 

Thus the narrator, Calthrop, the character 
standing in place of the author and speaking for 


7° 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


him (whom we will call A”), must tell how a 
certain other person, Ibrahim (‘‘B”’) told him the 
story of how still another person, Trent (‘‘C’’) 
had found a lost manuscript written by Gaius 
Claudius (“D”’), which should itself contain the 
account of how it came to be written. “C” must 
remain off-stage entirely; while the reader might 
hear the echo of his voice he must not be allowed 
access to him; and although it was necessary that 
a living character (‘‘B’’) should be able to explain 
the manner of “C’s” death, it was equally im- 
perative that ‘“B” must not have himself known 
what the papyrus contained, else he would be in 
a position to tell ‘A,’ who in turn would be in 
literary honor bound to reveal it to the reader. 
This last I accomplished by making ‘‘B” (Ibrahim) 
speak only Arabic, so that he could not know the 
true nature of “‘C’s” (Trent’s) discovery, although 
otherwise able to tell “A” (Calthrop) all that 
befell the two ill-fated archzologists. 

In addition, since the meat of the narrative 
was, so to speak, the innermost of a nest of 
boxes, the reader’s interest must be held while 
four curtains were raised one after the other until 
the actual story should be revealed—held through 
a series of quotations, inner quotations, and inner- 
inner quotations, without being diluted by the 


71 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


consciousness that it was, at best, a hearsay nar- 
rative of two thousand years ago. 

The problem proved so difficult that several 
times I abandoned it. Yet the theme was so fas- 
cinating that I could not bring myself to acknowl- 
edge final defeat. Mr. Perkins had suggested the 
idea to me in 1922, and my various experiments 
occupied me on and off until the spring of 1924. 

During this period in order to equip myself with 
the necessary data for writing the story I did a 
considerable amount of desultory historical read- 
ing—the New ‘Testament, Josephus, Smyth’s 
“How We Got Our Bible,” Ferrero’s “Trial of 
Piso,’ and various articles in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica on Jesus Christ, Tiberius, Pilate, Ger- 
manicus, etc. The “‘atmosphere”’ was supplied by 
Oscar Wilde’s “‘Salome,” Rosita Forbes’s ‘‘Secret 
of the Sahara,” Baedeker’s “Egypt,” Breasted’s 
‘Ancient Times,” and a few books on desert 
travel. I had never been to Egypt or the Fayum. 

I also read what stories I could find in English, 
or translated from the French and German, 
dramatizing events referred to in the Bible or 
having a scriptural interest, including perhaps 
that greatest of all short stories in any language, 
Anatole France’s ‘The Procurator of Judea.” 

But once I had solved the difficulty of construc- 


72 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


tion my problem became simply one of logic, 
supplemented by imagination. Bit by bit I built 
up my narrative. 

The Four Gospels had been written by men un- 
learned in political philosophy or economics. My 
apocryphal Fifth Gospel must be written by 
some one qualified by education and world expe- 
rience to inquire specifically and searchingly into 
the literal application of Christ’s social and eco- 
nomic theories. 

Who of such sort would have been likely to be 
in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion? 
There were few travellers in those days. Even 
Pilate, the procurator, was forced to make a hot 
and tedious journey up country from Cesarea to 
attend this Jewish festival. What more reason- 
able than that I should select as my scribe a 
young Roman doing the “grand tour” and tak- 
ing in the Feast of the Tabernacles on his way 
from Cappadocia and Armenia to Egypt, where he 
planned both to hunt hippopotami and crocodiles 
and to search for archeological remains—the lat- 
ter a favorite pastime of the gilded youth of 
Rome? 

And as my young Roman must have convenient 
access to Christ, and since according to tradition 
Pilate’s wife, Procula, was a secret convert, it was 


73 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


natural that I should make him her cousin and 
imagine that she had taken him with her to the 
Saviour’s place of confinement—where the conver- 
sation recorded in “The Lost Gospel” should 
occur. 

Now Procula was a Claudian, and so, as I had 
to give my hero a name, I selected for want of a 
better Marcus Claudius, hestitating whether I 
should add that of Proculus, and finally settling 
upon Gaius Marcus Claudius Silenus. 

Having at length, after a space of nearly two 
years, absorbed enough history and local color to 
start writing my story, I went one morning in the 
early spring of 1924 to the library of the Univer- 
sity Club in New York and sat down as usual at 
the table in the alcove at the southeasterly end 
of the room, where I was accustomed to work. 
There was no one else in the library at that 
time. 

Lying in the middle of the writing-pad—and 
otherwise the table was bare—was a book. I 
picked it up in order to make room for my papers 
and, as I was about to lay it aside, glanced at the 
title. It was “Under Pontius Pilate,” by William 
Schuyler, and published by Funk & Wagnalls in 
1906. The title-page stated that it was “a part 
of the correspondence between Caius Claudius 


74 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Proculus in Judea and Lucius Domitius Aheno- 
barbus at Athens in the years 28 and 29 A. D.” 

Opening the book, I discovered to my further 
surprise that it was the narrative of a young 
Roman, the nephew of Pontius Pilate or of Pro- 
cula his wife, who had been making an extensive 
trip through the further confines of the Roman 
Empire, including Cappadocia and Armenia, and 
who, like my own imaginary character Gaius 
Marcus Claudius Silenus, had visited Herod 
Antipas at Tiberias, seen Salome in the ‘‘ Dance of 
the Seven Veils,”’ been present at some of the mir- 
acles, and, in a word, had duplicated in almost 
exact detail the experiences of my hero. Of course, 
the two stories bore no resemblance to each other 
in either substance or purpose, since “Under 
Pontius Pilate” was merely an attempt to render 
in the vernacular the narrative of Christ’s minis- 
try as contained in the Four Gospels, but the skele- 
ton construction of the two was identical, with 
the trifling exception that, while my “Gaius” 
wrote his account on a papyrus addressed to the 
Emperor Tiberius at Capri, Schuyler’s “ Caius” in- 
dited his in the form of several short epistles to a 
friend in Athens. 

Now, I had never heard of the author, William 
Schuyler, or of his book, ‘‘ Under Pontius Pilate.”’ 


75 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


Had I done so, it might have saved me a vast 
amount of time and trouble. Nobody had ever 
suggested the book to me as one for reference. 
None of my friends had ever heard of it; nor, with 
the exception of Mr. Perkins, did any of them 
know that I was writing such a story. Yet, work- 
ing independently of Mr. Schuyler, who had been 
dead some ten years, I had evolved an almost ex- 
act replica of his vehicle for telling the story of 
the ministry of Christ—even to the name of his 
hero and the latter’s relationship to the Proc- 
urator. Both were lodged at the Pretorium, both 
visited Christ and talked with him, and both, if I 
remember correctly, wrote down their impres- 
sions while the Crucifixion was taking place. 
These similarities could be multiplied. 

I asked the librarian if he knew who had put 
the book on that table, but he replied that he not 
only had no idea who placed it there, but that he 
had never so much as heard of the book itself, al- 
though reference to the catalogue showed that it 
belonged to the University Club. The library is 
put in order every evening and all books returned 
to their proper places. This had been done as 
usual. I had arrived at the library about ten 
o'clock. It was otherwise empty, except for the 
librarian, in an adjoining room. Some unknown 


76 


THE LOST GOSPEL 


person had within an hour taken that book from 
the shelves, placed it in that exact spot, and gone 
out! 

I am not “psychic.” I have never, so far as I 
am aware, received any telepathic messages or 
communications from either the living or the dead. 
But apart from the extraordinary fact that William 
Schuyler and I, independently of each other, had 
both invented for our respective purposes a Gaius 
(or Caius) Claudius who was also a cousin (or 
nephew) of Procula, the wife of Pontius Pilate, 
and who knew and talked with Christ, and wrote 
down his impressions, I should like to know what 
hand placed that particular book in that particu- 
lar place at that particular time. 

Fan oA 8 


77 


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